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NLJ this week: Populist politics on crime: act tough, look tough

29 April 2022
Issue: 7976 / Categories: Legal News , Criminal , Profession
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Politicians love to look tough on crime and penal policy, but it’s a lamentable tradition, NLJ columnist Jon Robins writes this week

Robins highlights the latest example: Justice Secretary Dominic Raab’s announcement that he plans to ‘take back control’ of the Parole Board. It seems ‘unimaginable’ now, Robins writes, but there was a time when law and order was seen as ‘beyond the grubby world of politics’.

Sadly, Robins notes, the current administration in charge have all ‘read from the populist playbook and take the politicising of “law and order” to all-time lows’. 
Issue: 7976 / Categories: Legal News , Criminal , Profession
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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Browne Jacobson—Christian Major & Phil James

Browne Jacobson—Christian Major & Phil James

Partners join real estate investment and data protection teams in London

Birketts—five appointments

Birketts—five appointments

Five-strong agriculture team joins Bristol office

Kennedys—Samson Spanier

Kennedys—Samson Spanier

Commercial disputes practice bolstered by partner hire

NEWS
Judging is ‘more intellectually demanding than any other role in public life’—and far messier than outsiders imagine. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC reflects on decades spent wrestling with unclear legislation, fragile precedent and human fallibility
The long-predicted death of the billable hour may finally be here—and this time, it’s armed with a scythe. In a sweeping critique of time-based billing, Ian McDougall, president of the LexisNexis Rule of Law Foundation, argues in this week's NLJ that artificial intelligence has made hourly charging ‘intellectually, commercially and ethically indefensible’
From fake authorities to rent reform, the civil courts have had a busy start to 2026. In his latest 'Civil way' column for NLJ this week, Stephen Gold surveys a procedural landscape where guidance, discretion and discipline are all under strain
Fact-finding hearings remain a fault line in private family law. Writing in NLJ this week, Victoria Rylatt and Robyn Laye of Anthony Gold Solicitors analyse recent appeals exposing the dangers of rushed or fragmented findings
As the Winter Olympics open in Milan and Cortina, legal disputes are once again being resolved almost as fast as the athletes compete. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Ian Blackshaw of Valloni Attorneys examines the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS's) ad hoc divisions, which can decide cases within 24 hours
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